Diversity in STEM Review: let's talk solutions

I have a postgraduate degree in STEM and have been working as a researcher in science for a long time - most of the time I just hang in by the tips of my fingers. It is incredibly stressful and demanding work, for which I receive little recognition and no perspective of job security. I persevered by my hard work, some luck and a few supportive people. However, the STEM research (and applications) is a system built by wealthy white men (who usually have wives and many other resources) for wealthy white men (who usually have wives and many other resources) and this legacy makes it really hard for other types of people. This is true for all male dominated and prestigious professions.

The policies and institutions ignore (or just pay lip service) to the ways marriage, caring responsibilities, translocations affect lives of historically underrepresented groups - they assume that the impacts are negligible and everybody has a safety nets or resources that allow them to recover from such events. In reality, the impacts are often cumulative, and the effects on career trajectories are devastating. For example, common simplistic focus on men vs. women in STEM totally ignores the huge diversity within population of women - with those who are already relatively privileged (white/Engish-language native/wealthy/without dependants) reaping the most of the benefits of "promoting women", but the other still driven out of STEM by their intersectional disadvantage.

The decisions and policies are made by people who had many opportunities and privileges in their life and who assumes that most people who are or should be in STEM are just like them. An English native speaker cannot imagine how hard it is for a non-native English speaker to achieve similar goals, a person who is not an immigrant will not be ables to imaging what kind of hurdles an immigrant has to face (and how these hurdles will differ between immigrants from different countries, a person who has no children or has healthy children will not be able to imagine hardships of looking after special needs children, person without disability has no idea about life with disability. If truly diverse people are allowed to redesign and run our institutions and policies, we can hope for more inclusion and diversity at every rank. Fo now, it is mostly lip service.

It seems like much more is done to "encourage" minorities into STEM but there little affective action goes into retaining them. The action is needed at the stages where most of the minorities drop out - usually around the time they start families. Providing more policy, structural and institutional support to all carers, in STEM, but also outside STEM (of any kind, including looking after people other than children). AT the moment just childcare is universally unaffordable and conditional on the incredible amount of paperwork, which deters many for even trying to access it. Another issue is a gender pay gap - if a husband has higher pay and better job security, it is sonly rational for a mother to stop working to perform caring roles for the family and relatives, and when she is no longer needed for this it is usually too late to rebuild career in STEM. This, and many other structural and cultural inequalities hinder diversity in STEM and many other workforces. Having more equitable society would benefit all.